I have a 2 year old sharp laptop with windows xp. It worked fine up until about 4 months ago, when all of a sudden i had numerous problems:

1) the keyboard doesn't work, only the vowels appear on screen and are accented, none of the other keys (including enter etc)work
2) When you double click on desktop icons the properties box opens and not the program
3) Microsoft Office (2000 professional) programs do not run properly, cannot access any options on taskbar etc
4) It wont let me do a system restore, the mouse will not click on ok, to allow me to continue in the menu

Most other programs are running fine.
I have rebooted my computer (With restore discs) twice now, and each time it has worked fine for about a month and then reverted back to exactly the same problems .
this time, it is switching between working and not working, sometimes it works perfectly, but not for long

HELP!!!!
dont know much about computers, and no-one ive spoken so far seems to have any ideas
any suggestions would be appreciated

jemma

Originally posted by j3mma1:

"1) the keyboard doesn't work, only the vowels appear on screen and are accented, none of the other keys (including enter etc)work
2) When you double click on desktop icons the properties box opens and not the program"

A long shot… but these first two queries can be attributed to the ALT key being 'stuck' down. I've seen this happen for no apparent reason (and on many versions of Windows). Usually pressing the ALT key (and sometimes ALT GR) will return the keyboard input back to normal. Also, make sure that the StickyKeys accessibility feature is disabled; you can turn it of by visiting ‘Accessibility Options’ in Control Panel. Lastly, this could also be an indicator that the keyboard has a physical problem and maybe on it’s way out.

Originally posted by j3mma1:

"
3) Microsoft Office (2000 professional) programs do not run properly, cannot access any options on taskbar etc"

Again, when pressing ALT and right-clicking on a running task on the TaskBar causes the target program to be bought to the foreground rather than displaying the usual move, close etc. context menu.

Originally posted by j3mma1:

"
4) It wont let me do a system restore, the mouse will not click on ok, to allow me to continue in the menu"

Not sure about this one however. Maybe hitting enter will allow you to continue (if it's the default command button anyway, does it have a thicker border around it).

Originally posted by j3mma1:

"
Most other programs are running fine.
I have rebooted my computer (With restore discs) twice now, and each time it has worked fine for about a month and then reverted back to exactly the same problems .
this time, it is switching between working and not working, sometimes it works perfectly, but not for long"

As this behaviour seems to be sporadic, this may indicate that it is indeed StickKeys getting in the way and ‘sticking’ down the ALT key.

Anyhoo, I hope that I may have been of help to you. Post back if I’ve missed the target...

Hi

I saw that once, only certain letters would transpose to odd but predictable stuff.

I had selected two 'eligible' keyboard sets (somewhere) at one point, and the 'alternate' was being used and was quite different than my expectation.

If this doesn't point you towards the solution, I can't guess at what's up. Try Fonts, Regional Settings, email settings, keyboard, and languages. One of them should help.

Good Luck,

JEFF from cowtowne.